TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN - Review

Author: John Green

Star Rating: 4*

Goodreads Link

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read a John Green novel. I’m sure my last read of his was Paper Towns, back in 2015. I have a habit of falling a little behind when it comes to his newest novels. TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN was a hyped book I had been eager to read for months, waiting for the UK paperback to come out.

And I was not disappointed, as John Green has never disappointed with his books. TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN has the accurate anxiety representation I needed, and wanted, to read. It has the spiral-thoughts process, the overthinking, the worry, the rift it can cause in friendships. And he has a way of threading this through a story without making the anxious protagonist go pity-party or become annoying through her thoughts.

Aza is the paranoid overthinker I needed to read about at this current time in my life. She spends half the book wondering if a kiss could give her C-diff, or if a tiny cut will become infected and kill her. I’ve never related so hard with a character in a while. When she and her best friend embark on a mission to find Aza’s (kind of) boyfriend’s runaway billionaire father, Aza soon finds she’s not just in it for the monetary reward. As Aza and Davis grow closer, Aza’s anxiety pulls her deeper into dangerous depths as she starts to consider all that comes with relationships.

Reading this book felt like a safety blanket, of sorts. As an anxious thinker, and as someone who panics over a scratch, as someone who shares very similar thought-patterns to Aza, reading this book was pure comfort. It made me feel a little less crazy and alone.

There’s a part in the book that every anxious friend worries about: their worth and impact on others’ lives. Aza and her best friend have a massive argument centred around Aza’s anxiety and personality. Daisy makes Aza the villain when in actuality, she’s the victim of her own mental health. It was hard to read in all its painful truth, and things Daisy says can really be taken to heart and applied to more than just characters on a page. Aza finds it in her to forgive both her friend and herself—a thing I wouldn’t be entirely sure I could do so quickly. It’s not everyday you can go back to normal with a friend who calls you exhausting to be around.

TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN shows the darkest moments of compulsive thoughts and anxiety, but it also shows that in rare moments, all of that can be overcome and light can crack through the storm of spiral thoughts. Davis, a deep thinker, is the perfect balance to Aza’s own thoughts, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the thought processes that go on in this novel. It’s definitely on my reread pile.